Artist Eva Frankfurther

We have recently discovered that the artist Eva Frankfurther was an alumna of South Hampstead.

Eva’s paintings are currently on display at the Barbican Gallery where there is a special exhibition of post-war British artists, 1945 to 65: a period where artists had to make sense of an entirely altered world.

Eva and her sister Beate fled Berlin at the start of World War Two and arrived in England as refugees in 1939; the sisters attended South Hampstead and eventually joined the evacuation to Berkhamsted.

After the war, Eva enrolled at St. Martin’s School of Art where her fellow students included Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach. After graduation, Eva moved to the East End of London and worked as a bottle washer at Lyons Corner House, so that she could paint all day while working in the evenings. She concentrated on the local East End populations of Jewish, Irish, Pakistani and West Indian immigrants. She had exhibitions at the Whitechapel and Ben Uri Galleries, but sadly died in 1959. It is wonderful that we can see her paintings today at the Barbican.

Her sister Beate recently returned to speak to our Junior School pupils about her family’s experience of being Jewish German refugees.